Posted May 25th 2011 MOOS-IvP Ported and Field Tested on the Bluefin-9 UUV.

On May 25th, scientists from Bluefin Robotics and the MIT Laboratory for Autonomous Marine Sensing Systems (LAMSS) field-tested a Bluefin-9 man-portable UUV running the MOOS-IvP payload autonomy software. Although MIT has been running MOOS-IvP on its own Bluefin 21-inch UUVs since August 2005, this is the first time that the payload autonomy paradigm has been ported to the Bluefin-9 platform.

Notables:

The MOOS-IvP and Goby Acomms software was run on the main vehicle computer alongside the Bluefin front-seat software. Although the likely plan is to integrate a stand-alone payload autonomy computer, this arrangement was used as a proof-of-concept for operating MOOS-IvP on the Bluefin-9. It was also worth noting that were no issues with overall CPU load despite the suite of MOOS-IvP modules running alongside the Bluefin software on the same low-powered CPU.

These field exercises also included the testing of side-scan image compression algorithms developed by WHOI, transmitted over acoustic link using the MIT LAMSS acoustic messaging scheme in MOOS found in the Goby Acomms package.